Posts in the Politics Category

Here’s a good way to improve national security: arrest people who admit to inadvertently taking potential weapons onto airplanes.  Yeah, that will really encourage people to be helpful.  So let’s say, just hypothetically, that I or somebody I knew had accidentally taken a utility knife or knitting needles or whatever on a flight or two, and airport security missed it.  If I report this fact in the interests of improving screening procedures and helping authorities identify weak points in airport security, I could face jail time.  What a great idea!

In a novel, this state of affairs would be tragicomic.  In 2002 America, it’s deeply stupid and somewhat scary.  To paraphrase Ellen Ripley, did IQs just drop sharply when I wasn’t looking?

• Thursday, 24 January 2002 was published on Thursday, January 24th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

I was going to slow down posting anyway, and then my Linksys router got fried (thanks to a firmware update I got from Linksys, no less) so going online has been a lot more difficult of late.  Nonetheless, I had to put this link up for you: Freedoms Curtailed in the Defense of Liberty (The Onion).  The truly scary part is that the article isn’t much of an exaggeration over what I’ve been hearing both on the news and on the street.  As an example, someone said on a newsgroup recently about some peace protestors, “Now THOSE people scare me.  Really.”  American citizens peacefully exercising their freedom of speech to oppose violence in the world and support nonmilitary solutions is scary?

Scary.

• Wednesday, 11 October 2001 was published on Thursday, October 11th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

I found this to be deeply thought-provoking, if sometimes clumsily written: There Is No Alternative to War (Salon.com).  From the same site, one of my favorite cartoons: This Modern World.  I’d tell you to enjoy them, but somehow that seems wholly inappropriate…

• Tuesday, 2 October 2001 was published on Tuesday, October 2nd, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

Another two links to pass along to the (very) few people who will ever see this.  First: Roots of Rage (Time).  Understanding these things is very important, because in the months to come, we have a choice: our actions in the “war on terrorism” will make our position in the world better, or worse; we will either reduce the dangers we face, or multiply them.  I know which one I’d prefer.  Second: A Pure, High Note of Anguish (L.A. Times) by Barbara Kingsolver.  It’s deeply, almost distressingly human.

• Friday, 28 September 2001 was published on Friday, September 28th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

Ever felt like you were teetering on a precipice?  You should after reading the following: Ashcroft faces congressional worries over proposed law changes (CNN) and Hackers face life imprisonment under ‘Anti-Terrorism’ Act (SecurityFocus), not to mention Terror attacks revive crypto debate (also SecurityFocus; scroll down to get to the frightening parts).  Apparently, the Bush administration has so fallen for its own assertion that these terrorists hate us solely because of who we are and what we stand for, they’ve decided the best way to ward off future attacks is to change America to resemble the types of repressive regimes that spawn said terrorists.  Civil liberties?  Who needs ’em?

• Tuesday, 25 September 2001 was published on Tuesday, September 25th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my comments on Saturday touched off a spirited debate within my own household.  Kat wants to make it clear that she can’t understand how anyone, anywhere, could celebrate the death of several thousand people under any circumstance.  I actually agree with her, and didn’t mean to imply that I supported the celebration (much less the practice) of mass murder.  I don’t.  I’d like to think that nobody does, but a few lines from a song keep coming to mind: “Folks are basically decent / Conventional wisdom would say / Well, we read about the exceptions / In the paper every day.”

A thought experiment: consider the massive outpouring of charitable giving for the victims of 9/11, and then suppose that there had been a similarly massive outpouring of charitable aid ten years earlier for the people of Afghanistan, whose country was shattered by Soviet occupation.

• Monday, 24 September 2001 was published on Monday, September 24th, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

From the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages: Whooping It Up.  Note that I don’t condone any of the actions described, and I certainly don’t condone terrorist activity.  The piece itself may well be totally biased and not representative of the general world.  It is still an important piece to read—not to inflame yourself to greater heights of patriotism and paranoia, but to think hard about why the people described in that piece feel the way they do.  It didn’t happen overnight, or for no reason.  You will probably be angered by what you read, but ask yourself this: what are all the roots of my anger?  What about the anger of the people in the story; what are its roots? Does it have any legitimacy at all, even in part?

As I said to a colleague recently, “I’m afraid that [an attack] will happen again, and even worse, I’m afraid it will happen because we missed the moment, in our pain and grief, to really listen to the world around us.”  While he agreed with me, I think this is probably the worst possible time to ask (most of) my countrymen to think, let alone listen to anything except “God Bless America” for the ninetieth time.

Anyway, if this posting offends you, I feel very sorry for that, but again I urge you to ask this question of yourself, so long as you resolve to honestly answer yourself:  for what reason(s) do I feel offended?

• Saturday, 22 September 2001 was published on Saturday, September 22nd, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

Hoo boy… life took over again.  Here’s what happened in the last month:

Kat and I went to her tenth college reunion at Brandeis University, where we met up with friends of hers (in some cases, also friends of mine) and had a lot of fun for three days.  Kat even convinced me to dance, which anyone will tell you is both a rare thing and an event to be avoided at all costs.  Still, I enjoyed myself.  The campus is quite beautiful, and the view from the top of The Rock is pretty nice too.

The day after we got back from the reunion, I went out to Mountain View for nine days to get to know my fellow team members better, and get myself up to speed on what’s going on with Netscape 6.1 and the future of the browser.  Despite what you may have heard, Netscape is not getting out of the browser market.  If nothing else, it would be kind of silly for them to hire someone like me if they weren’t going to be a browser company any more.  Anyway, my parents flew out a day after I did for a vacation, so we met up for dinner while they were on their way through town to the wine country north of the city.  That weekend, Peter Murray (good friend and library automation expert extraordinaire) was in town for a conference so we also met for dinner.  It was definitely odd meeting up in San Francisco with people I know who live (literally) thousands of miles from there, just as I do.

A few days after that, Kat flew out, my parents came back into San Francisco, and we all set off on a vacation which we’d had planned before Netscape first contacted me about the job.  We went—where else?—to Ragged Point for several days, and put relaxation on the top of our “To Do” list.  I’m hoping that my pictures come out okay, because if they did I got some beautiful shots.  We also saw a pod of (probably) humpback whales off the shore, which is unusual for that time of year.  And, of course, we dined like emperors on the incredible culinary creations of Roger Wall, genius chef at the Ragged Point Restaurant.  In short, a wonderful time was had by all.

Just as a side note—the more I think about it, the more I like the idea I proposed in my last update: U.S. federal income tax forms should allow taxpayers to vote for the programs on which they’d like to see their money be spent.  For example—and I’m being very hypothetical here—assume that Americans collectively indicated that they wanted most of their money to go to NASA, and very little of it to the Defense Department.  We’d know which one should get funding priority, wouldn’t we?  Of course, in the real world it would likely be the other way around, but that’s not my point.  What I’m trying to say is that when you ask people what they’re willing to pay for, you find out what they consider most important.  I think that’s worth knowing.

• Sunday, 1 July 2001 was published on Sunday, July 1st, 2001.
• It was assigned to the Politics and Travel categories.
• There have been no replies.